30 June 2009 8:01 AM

I suppose I became interested in pop music when I was about 11, in 1962 or thereabouts.

I used to listen to Alan Freeman's Top Twenty programme on the BBC Light Programme, and later could sometimes conjure Radio Luxembourg out of the family transistor radio, though the old plug-in wireless wouldn't get it.

I can still remember the wavelength - 208 on the Medium Wave, also that of Radio London (266) the pirate station with the best reception in the South Midlands where I then lived, which flooded the air with the pop music of the mid-1960s.

It was aimed with brilliant accuracy at my generation, our yearnings and our self-pity, and I suspect that skilled advertising men and even musicologists were involved in writing and promoting much of it because they knew we had money to spend and would carry on spending it for years to come.

I suppose it's possible that it was an accident and a coincidence, but it was in that case the most lucrative coincidence in history.

Later on I completely stopped being interested in it - when I was about 19, and went to university.

I saw it then, and see it now, as an adolescent taste best abandoned, like sweet fizzy drinks, Che Guevara, chewing gum and denim clothes.

These reminiscences, which fill me with inward horror at the drivel I then enjoyed, are prompted by a comment from a Mr Pete Hindle, who writes to say: 'I find it amazing that you've never managed to hear a Michael Jackson song.

'You must obviously live in some bunker somewhere, ignorant of the real world - thus explaining your willingness to vote Conservative and proclaim David Davis a man of the people.

'And as for the Speaker for the Commons, you've got to be the first person I've heard of that thought it was a good idea for them to dress up like an idiot.

'You are aware that parliament is our elected body, not a historic recreation of bygone times, right?'

Oh, thank you so much, Mr Hindle, for so many opportunities at once to argue my position.

I don't find it at all amazing that other people are familiar with all this stuff and listen to it, and even seek it out.

I realise that there are plenty of people who don't share my tastes, who aren't my age, who dislike what I like or are indifferent to it, or who like what I dislike. I'm sorry about that, in many ways.

Proper music is far more potent and far better for the soul than the cheap stuff.

But I think that to find it 'amazing' would be to reveal myself as extraordinarily closed to the idea that other people make different choices from the one that I make. I'm not 'amazed' by Mr Hindle's tastes.

There's also a hint of conformist intolerance here.

I ought, in his view, to have 'managed' to hear a Michael Jackson song. I may well have done so.

What I said was that I hadn't knowingly or intentionally done so? Why? Why is he so sure that I should have done this?

Mr Jackson was not Mozart, let alone my model for musical achievement, J.S.Bach, and in my view his work will not endure beyond the age in which it was popular (The reverse is true of Bach. Many of his works, unknown at the time, are now much beloved).

Am I, as he says, ignorant of the 'real world' because I know little or nothing of Michael Jackson? Do I live in a bunker?

I think it's going to be hard for Hindle to sustain that argument.

I would say that I have more important knowledge of the real world than a familiarity with Mr Jackson's videos would give me.

This is partly through the immense privilege I have had of living abroad and still have of being able to travel widely, sometimes to rather unlovely places, partly because, as a writer of books, I'm required to read and study and research, partly because as a newspaper reporter I have spent the last three decades seeing at first hand what most people see at second or third hand.

Wherever that may be, it's not a bunker. Which of us is in truth more sheltered from reality?

Is it true, as I think it is, that Bach, Handel, Purcell, Gibbons and Corelli can say more in two minutes than Michael Jackson did in his entire life?

Is it true that Durham Cathedral is an immeasurably finer building than Centre Point, that Robert Frost is a better poet by hundreds of miles than Ted Hughes, that Rembrandt is a far greater artist than Picasso, and both of them in a different class from jokers such as Marcel Duchamp?

Can it be stated that Charles Dickens is a better novelist than Salman Rushdie?

Is it a pity that millions of people in this country have never been introduced to good music - and have, for example, been completely cut off from the great tradition of English church music that was a normal part of the lives of previous generations?

Can we actually say for certain that one thing is better than another, or more important than another?

If we can, and only if we can, we can also say that popularity is not a test of goodness, that the majority may be wrong, that education is better than ignorance, thought better than the other thing, order than chaos, beauty better than ugliness.

If we can't, then it's all chaos mingled with conformism, those who won't conform are to be scorned and perhaps punished, and nothing has any point beyond its immediate effect, the past and the future don't matter.

Which brings me to Mr Hindle's second superior jeer, in which he says that my attitude explains 'your willingness to vote Conservative and proclaim David Davis a man of the people. And as for the Speaker for the Commons, you've got to be the first person I've heard of that thought it was a good idea for them to dress up like an idiot. You are aware that Parliament is our elected body, not a historic recreation of bygone times, right?'.

How very unobservant Mr Hindle must be if he thinks I shall ever again vote Conservative.

I spend about half my time urging people not to do so, Mr Hindle, and am sorry you haven't noticed. I plainly have work to do.

Peter Mandelson is right in one thing, that you only start getting your message across to most people some time after you yourself have grown heartily sick of saying it.

Once again, the fact that Mr Hindle hasn't heard a defence of tradition before seems to mean more to him than it should.

Could that be because Mr Hindle lives in some sort of bunker with a 'No Traditionalists' sign over the door, and another placard saying 'people interested in history will be shot' dangling from the razor wire?

I have no idea. But it could be because his acquaintance and his reading are both just too narrow. He should get out more, intellectually at least.

But here's a thing. If Parliament had nothing to commend it except the fact that it was 'elected', I think it might have a hard time establishing its authority.

If anybody ever thinks about the process of election in this country (and few do) he realises that what happens falls well short of any ideal.

Two groups of people chosen in private meetings by the activists and leaderships of two established parties is placed before the electorate.

They are then invited to choose between them, and obediently do so.

Anybody who isn't chosen by either of these parties has virtually no chance of election. Most of the results are predetermined by boundaries drawn to ensure that this is so.

If the Iranians had to put up with such a system, I rather think we'd sympathise with them over it.

It's only because this method has grown up over time, and we respect Parliament because it's been a part of the national life so long, that we never think about it, and perhaps we should do so more often.

It would certainly be more useful and constructive to reform these two parties than to change the Speaker's clothes, a 'reform' which doesn't improve in any way the public's control over events, the freedom of debate or the fairness of the procedures of Westminster.

The point about traditions is that they remind us that things have origins, that they are based upon experience greater than any we may have in our lifetimes.

As Edmund Burke puts it, our civilisation is the result of a compact between 'the dead, the living and the unborn', in which the living listen to the experience of the dead though tradition and history, and are reminded by this that they are only leaseholders, who will themselves one day be dead, and must pass everything on to others - intact if possible.

If we know and respect our history, and observe these harmless and often picturesque traditions, we do not have to repeat these mistakes and are armoured against them.

The Speaker's robes and procession, the Black Rod ceremony at the Opening of Parliament and all the rest of it are a reminder and a warning, against tyranny, and against the tyrannies that revolution can create by being too self-righteous.

As I say in my book, 'The Broken Compass', it is not an accident that a country which has a Gold State Coach, a Black Rod and a hereditary Earl Marshal is also a country which does not have a secret police or torture chambers.

Funny, isn't it, that as all these supposedly worthless traditions come under attack, we become less free and more tyrannised?

27 June 2009 8:13 PM

It is time David Davis left the Tory Party and urged others to follow. He is by far the most distinguished, experienced and principled conservative politician in the country.

Yet there is now no room for him in David Cameron’s teenage Shadow Cabinet of Etonians, nobodies and Etonian nobodies.

This glaring fact, set alongside the fawning support which the Leftist BBC and Leftist Guardian now give Mr Cameron, should tell us all we need to know about the Tories.

If Mr Cameron becomes Prime Minister, we will be told that he has done so precisely because he is a liberal, and the remaining real conservatives in his party will be marginalised and crushed for a generation.

But a proper dramatic moment is needed, to drive home this fact to the voters. The time is just right for it. Tory MPs are currently in turmoil, many fiercely resenting the shameless injustice of Mr Cameron’s expenses purge. This has fallen heavily on MPs Mr Cameron doesn’t like or agree with – but has exempted Mr Cameron’s own closest allies, and let off Mr Cameron himself, despite the exposure of his greedy use of taxpayers’ money to buy himself a large country house which he could easily have paid for himself.

The Tory front bench is a mixture of pitiful inexperience and fierce disagreement, a truth only concealed by the state of Labour’s Cabinet of None of the Talents. It is divided over the EU, over economic policy, over defence policy and over the central issue of liberty.

Now David Davis has also brought things to a head over what might be called David Cameron’s Clause Four issue – the need to rebuild the grammar schools.

Anthony Blair famously ditched the pro-nationalisation Clause Four of his party’s constitution. Labour’s real guarantee of socialist egalitarianism was actually its passion for comprehensives, and its hatred for selection by ability. But Mr Blair’s greatest triumph was to intimidate the beaten Tories into adopting this, Labour’s worst policy. Mr Cameron has indeed had his long-heralded Clause Four moment – but he has adopted Clause Four, not dropped it.

This is the heart of his Unconservative programme. It is the Cameron pledge to govern as New Labour, which is what has got him the friendship of the BBC. Mr Davis was cynically destroyed in his Tory leadership campaign by London liberal PR men and journalists working in concert to promote the unknown, undistinguished David Cameron. He was left out in the cold when he staged his ill-advised but rather admirable one-man campaign for liberty a year ago.

Now he has retaliated in a biting, double-edged speech defending the grammar schools – a message he repeats in The Mail on Sunday today. He attacked the privileged people who defend the comprehensive system. He ended by saying this, perhaps the most honest thing a politician has uttered in this country for 20 years: ‘They punished the bright poor kids who were held back. They handicapped the intellectual capacity of the country ... and out of this catastrophe there was only one winning group. Do you know who they were? Yes, the Public Schools – who teach just seven per cent of the population.’

I’ve seldom seen a more blatant challenge, both political and personal, hurled by one politician at the feet of another. How could anyone miss the implied snarl at the Etonian smoothie putsch which sidelined Mr Davis?

Yet, like Lord Tebbit’s astonishing ‘Don’t vote Tory’ outburst of a few weeks ago, it was denied the oxygen of publicity by the liberal clique who run political journalism. If Mr Davis really wants to harm his enemies, he will have to stop speaking in code and take to open rebellion. Now would be good. Go on, David, what is there to lose?

Now, that’s what I call a Speaker

A tradition is like a tree. We owe it to our ancestors. It takes centuries to grow, and offers beauty, shelter, space for thought and solace. And it can be destroyed by a moron in ten minutes.What makes John Bercow think he has any business getting rid of what remains of the Speaker’s ceremonial robes and adornments?

It was bad enough Betty Boothroyd dispensing with the wig. If she didn’t want to wear it, she shouldn’t have become Speaker, and the same goes for Michael Martin and Mr Bercow.

What these vandals do not seem to grasp is that they command respect not because of who they are but because of the office they hold. Stripped of wig, robes and bands, we see only the person. And we do not like what we see. If Mr Martin had worn the horsehair on his head, people might not have noticed so quickly that he resembled, in many significant ways, a horse’s backside.

As for Mr Bercow, in his banker’s suit, it is plain already that he is a walking triviality, perched on the cushions of an ancient throne. One day someone will be chosen for this job who realises that the truly courageous, original thing to do is to respect the traditions passed down by our ancestors, and leave them alone. Why does this dreadful generation think itself so much better than all its forebears? It has absolutely no reason to do so.

One other thing about Mr Bercow. Upon his election, he crowed: ‘Colleagues, you have just bestowed upon me the greatest honour that I have enjoyed in my professional life.’ Professional? When will these people grasp that politics is not a profession, with a salary structure, expenses and a pension, but a duty?

The scandal Jackson hid

Until Friday I had never in my life knowingly, let alone deliberately, heard Michael Jackson sing. I know of him only as the victim of plastic surgery and excessive fame.

I am sorry for his bereaved family but I do not think his death merited one fiftieth part of the coverage it was given.

I am sure there are many millions like me, who woke on Friday amid a wave of fake grief they did not share or understand. What is worse is that this bloated non-event allowed the BBC to bury a real and potent story.

The gross overpayment of senior Corporation staff, and the sheer vanity revealed in their expenses, is a national scandal. So is the way that they sought for so long to withhold this information.

Almost all these people regard themselves as egalitarian radicals, and their organisation campaigns relentlessly for Left-wing policies. They pump swear words and ultra-violence into the homes of millions.

Now we know why they see no problems in this. The BBC’s leadership is protected from the consequences of its actions by great ramparts of money – taken from us under threat of jail, through the licence fee.

I am seriously thinking of getting rid of my TV set, for the joy of knowing I shall never have to pay these people another penny.

* Why is there no fuss about the Lord Chief Injustice’s craven decision to allow Britain’s first jury-free criminal trial? He says it’s too expensive to protect the jury from threats of tampering – though the nature of this tampering has never been revealed, and £6million seems a cheap price for preserving the main pillar of our liberty, compared with the size of (say) the parliamentary expenses budget.

* Readers of this column will know that ‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder’ is an invention. It’s Britain that’s disordered, not the children. Now we have Sonny Grainger, who at 12 is a skilled thief and vandal, being excused by his mother (no father is in evidence, surprise surprise) who drivels that he has ‘Oppositional Defiant Disorder’. No he doesn’t. He’s just an undisciplined lout.

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25 June 2009 4:21 PM

When I said that Britain would turn into a poor country, I think this is actually happening, and the credit crunch will accelerate it. We will not recover to the levels we previously reached. Our currency will be weaker than it was. The damage to the City will be permanent. Already Britain feels substantially poorer than Germany and large parts of France, and I think that process will continue, with our relative standard of living falling and our national budget unable to sustain the ambitious welfare state we aspire to run.

It won't be an instant impoverishment, as happens when you are conquered and plundered. But it seems to me likely that it will be a long-term one. What could stop it? The rebirth of rigorous education, the re-establishment of order and morality, and the dismantling of much of the welfare state which now has (rather ineffectually) to pick up the pieces left by educational, moral and societal decay.

By the way, I'm asked why I never propose any measures for those living in broken homes etc. But I am constantly proposing measures to put that right, based upon the re-establishment of lifelong marriage as the respected norm. It's just that people don't like this solution, just as they don't like my answer to the bankruptcy of the political parties. Sorry, these are the answers I have. If there were easier ones, I'd come up with them.

I think Mr Brant's comments on jury trial have been well-answered by others. Deciding a fellow-creature's guilt or innocence requires more responsibility, experience and knowledge than most people have acquired by the age of 18. The most amazing thing about his contribution is his assumption that a middle-aged person will be a 'bigot' and an 18-year-old open-minded. This is just another version of the famous conjugation ‘I am an idealist. You have strong convictions. He is a bigot.’ Though if by 'bigot' we mean someone who has strong opinions, is intolerant of the views of others, and has little knowledge on which to base these positions, then we are at least as likely to find bigots among 18-year-olds, if not more so, than we are to find them among the more mature.

If we can't have a property qualification (and I can see that this is a very blunt instrument) then we must have tests based on both age and education. Is there really any serious argument against this?

As for unanimous verdicts, I think they march together with some sort of experience or educational qualification. I think we should have both, at the same time. I really don't believe there would have been any opposition to the conviction of Sonnex from a jury made up of educated and experienced people.

Those who think there isn't a general establishment prejudice against juries should read the relevant chapter in my book, and also the Auld Report, which throbs with dislike of independent juries. Their existence is a happy accident which authority nowadays would never grant. That is why they have to be defended so fiercely.

It is perfectly true that many trials take place at summary level. But in all cases those involved could opt for jury trial if they wished. We may speculate on why they do not do so. Having attended many magistrates courts and Crown courts during my early years as a reporter, I have some views of my own. But it is the universal freedom to be tried by a jury that is important.

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I promised to give some replies to comments on the EU and Jury postings. As usual, there isn't really room to do justice to either of these vast subjects.

But let me begin with the EU, I'll concentrate on the contribution from John Davies, which lies outside the usual 'yes it is’, and 'no it isn't' bit of the debate. He says, rather surprisingly, that the EU is not in fact powerful at all. To justify this, he suggests that the power of the EU can be measured by such things as the size of its budget.

You might as well measure it by the number of people it directly employs, which is (like the budget) comparatively tiny. Much more significant is the number of people who actually abide by and enforce its decrees, and the quantities of national budgets which are devoted to its ends. The EU depends greatly, at this stage in its development, on keeping up the appearance that nations still have their own governments.

This is specially important here, where national independence is a treasured possession stretching back for unbroken centuries, and in Ireland where it is a hard-won prize. It is startlingly less important in France, invaded and subjugated twice in the past 150 years, in Germany, which learned that it must follow its national interests in more subtle ways after two attempts to impose them by force, and in Italy which only came into existence as a nation very recently and had (like Germany) a bad experience when it sought to assert itself. As I've said elsewhere, Britain is the only virgin in a continent of rape victims. As I haven't said elsewhere, that is why she needs to be drugged by deceit into acquiescence in the current process. But every so often she half wakes up, like poor Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby, to cry out ‘This isn't a dream. This is really happening!’ And so it is.

The EU's power is at heart an agreement by the central member states that certain directions will be followed. There is no need for coercion, though an underlying fear of larger neighbours, well-taught during the 20th century, certainly motivates many of the smaller nations. The two key members, France and Germany, formalised their very curious alliance at the Elysee Treaty of January 1963. The smaller and poorer original members, Benelux and Italy, were either economically, militarily or diplomatically overshadowed by the Franco-German partnership, which continues to be the heart of the project. The origin of the EU's power lies in the joint recognition of France and Germany, and their establishments, that they cannot manage without each other, that Germany can have power if it exercises it through the EU but not if it does so openly, and that France can have standing, prestige (and considerable economic benefits) if it accepts an unstated but actual German political primacy.

This relationship became more one-sided after German reunification, but has survived remarkably well considering the strains it could have imposed. The certainty, among France's elite, that conflict with Germany in future is futile, over-rode traditional French fears of a united Germany. (Arthur Koestler wrote interestingly about the doomed relationship of the two countries, one a land of bread and wine, the other a land of coal and iron, and their unequal populations, in the opening pages of his extraordinary book Scum of the Earth, which I thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in the darker corners of European history).

The absorption of Britain was almost certainly a mistake on the EU's terms. They were attracted by the access to British markets it offered, by the possibilities of absorbing our military capability into an all-Europe one, by the fishing grounds, by the large net contributions which we were bound to make. Above all, they wanted to end what they regard as annoying British attempts to prevent a single power dominating the continent, the principle of London's foreign policy since the days of the first Queen Elizabeth. What they didn't anticipate was the depth and strength of the incompatibility between the Continental approach to law, government and regulation, and British traditions.

It was undoubtedly a mistake on British terms. We gained nothing economically or politically by it, losing what remained of our special Commonwealth trading links, losing our territorial waters, our foreign policy independence and our ability to make our own arrangements for regulating and subsidising our industry and agriculture. We also lost our political independence, and control over our own borders. I could make a longer list if I thought it would help the argument, but most readers will get my point. British establishment enthusiasm for the European idea was rooted in chagrin, and in mistrust of the USA, following our defeat at Suez.

It was in a way a sort of British Vichy mentality, defeatist and self-denigratory. It became clear during the 1980s that we were quite able to recover from the economic and political sickness of the Eden-Macmillan-Home-Wilson-Callaghan era, and were also able to conduct ourselves effectively as a medium sized diplomatic and military power. It was also increasingly clear that the ever-closer union promised in the Treaty of Rome was becoming irksome because of its growing interference with British laws at home and with our freedom of action abroad. Meanwhile, the endless promises of greater access to markets in Europe never seemed to be fulfilled.

It is perfectly true that the EU has no power of any kind to force us to remain within it, and in fact the Lisbon Treaty for the first time codifies the procedure for a country which wishes to leave the EU. We could leave tomorrow, without damage, if we so wished. But the leaderships of all political parties refuse to countenance this. Why? Mr Davies is perfectly correct in saying that the British government and civil service gold-plate EU laws and regulations, because they like them so much and see them as opportunities to do what they wanted to do before. Also on occasion ministers like to claim that the EU is forcing them to do things they wish to do anyway (a very important reason why British politicians, unwilling to reveal or take responsibility for their own real aims, support EU membership so strongly. The Strasbourg Human Rights Court, a non-EU body, often performs the same function, 'forcing' British governments to do things they wanted to do anyway, but couldn't get past the voters. The Strasbourg Court has no power in Britain, except the power the British government wants to give it). But British politicians are not so keen to acknowledge their impotence over such things as Post Office closures, the wrecking of our fisheries, or the current rubbish collection mess, as they don't like admitting how much power they've handed over in return for the general irresponsibility the EU provides.

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24 June 2009 4:36 PM

But here are a few responses, explanations, retorts, dismissals and general discussions of points made on this site in the past few days.

First let me dispense with the topic of the MMR, where my advocacy of sympathy for parents perplexed and isolated by government policy has led to several misunderstandings and misrepresentations of my position. I feel I ought to put a stop to this.

First, and most important, I have never offered any advice to parents on whether or not to let their children have the MMR, since I first wrote about this subject in the Mail on Sunday on 28th January 2001. I have never said that the MMR is dangerous. I have never said that it causes Autism. I haven't said these things because I do not know them to be true. I have always been extremely careful to make it clear that I do not know the answers to these questions.

My concern, from the start, has been that the authorities, by airily brushing off the fears of parents who are worried, have damaged their own cause for no good purpose. My solution to the difficulty has, from the start, been to urge the availability of single vaccinations on the NHS.

My resolve was strengthened some years ago by a particularly slimy attempt (recently recounted here) made by persons unknown to accuse me of influencing a mother into refusing the MMR, with the result that her children were damaged. This was a fraud, involving the theft of a real woman's identity and the deliberate, ingenious and malicious concoction of a false address, an untrue letter, making terrible accusations, and a fake signature. If I were able to find the culprits, I think criminal charges could successfully be brought against them. It was all most professionally done and it took a lot of spadework and foot-slogging to uncover the deceit, methods the authors plainly hoped or believed I would not use. Tough luck. I am a reporter by trade.

I decided that people who resorted to such methods must by their very nature be suspect, and their cause flawed. Had this not happened, I might by now have let the matter drop.

But since then (see below) I have also been repeatedly struck by the wanton exaggeration of the danger of measles, a danger which exists but which is not as great as they say it is, by the pro-MMR lobby, another factor which has persuaded me that they themselves suspect their own case to be weak. Good causes have no need of such overstatement.

I have, for more than eight years and quite consistently, long before any substantial outbreaks of measles in this country, said that the NHS should make single vaccines available if its main aim is to create 'herd immunity' against measles. I have been utterly unconvinced by the extraordinarily thin and bureaucratic arguments advanced against this reasonable and practicable suggestion, all of which depend on the mistaken belief that all the worried parents will eventually come round if enough pressure is placed upon them. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the human heart, typical of authoritarian utopians. If the single vaccine suggestion had been followed when I (and many others) first offered it (I did so first in my January 2001 article), many measles cases would unquestionably have been avoided.

The authorities, as is well known, made this problem a great deal worse when Anthony Blair (whose government was at the time using large amounts of taxpayers' money to promote the MMR, while refusing to offer single vaccines) refused to say if his son Leo, then due for the MMR, had received it.

I am particularly grateful to Vikki Boynton for kindly making this point on my behalf. But in case any reader is in any doubt on this matter, I have restated my position above.

Now, to Mr Hadley, whose determination to carry on fighting two hopeless battles at once is admirable, if his arguments themselves (and some of his debating methods) are not. But before I can properly engage Mr Hadley, I must quickly deal with Mr McCarty and the person concealing his or her true identity behind the silly appellation of 'Joe Blogs'.

Mr McCarty accuses me of being 'picky' about the measles statistics I display, as if I were trying to conceal or misrepresent something. This is not so. Mr McCarty also suggests that I have in some way sought to minimise the effect of the foundation of the NHS on measles deaths. I have also done no such thing. It never crossed my mind. I cannot be sure there is any particular connection. The verdict of the measles statistics doesn't really come down firmly either way, and one must remember that the early years of the NHS were also the years of a coal shortage, bread rationing, one of the coldest winters on record, major London smogs, etc. This country had an extensive health service before the NHS, by no means restricted to the wealthy (see James Bartholomew's interesting book The Welfare State We're In for details).

Accurate statistics on measles outbreaks and deaths in this country can be obtained from several different sources with two or three clicks of a mouse. Only an idiot would try to falsify or conceal them, and I am only too happy for anyone to check them. They show quite clearly that the major reduction in deaths from measles in the last century (from thousands of deaths a year to dozens per year and less) took place long before immunisation of any kind was introduced. Variations in the interim depend mainly on the size and scale of measles epidemics, which vary considerably from year to year. But the deaths are demonstrably much lower by 1950 than they were in 1914. This is a simple, undeniable, unavoidable, enormous *fact*. It emphasises my point that the main danger to children comes not from measles by itself, but from the combination of measles with malnutrition and general ill-health, associated with the sort of poverty now virtually abolished in this country. This is consistent with my other argument, that measles is not a killer in a modern, civilised country except when there are rare complications, or where the victim is already seriously ill or malnourished.

I started my figures at 1950 because I was arguing with Mr Hadley at the time about what had been going on the period when I was a child. I didn't think I had room to reproduce the lot.

Mr McCarty makes a curious assertion in his posting of 22nd June (3.00 pm). It is this: 'The fall between 1950 and 1968 has nothing to do with improved hygiene; the trend that can be credited for that can be seen at the beginning of the HPA graph starting at 1940 and it stops before 1950.' What is this trend? He does not say. I am genuinely interested to know what alternative explanation he offers. By the way, I contend that the end of malnutrition, and better general health (rather than hygiene), are the main influential factors.

The person styled 'Blogs' makes a confusion (one I have many times pointed out on this site while 'Blogs' has been contributing). In the tiny number of grammar schools now in existence, heavily oversubscribed , with the ultra-competitive entry which results from the huge demand for them, I have no doubt many parents resort to private tuition to get their children into them. Under the system which once existed and which I wish to restore, of grammar schools being generally available, there will be no need for this to happen, and I do not think it will. If 'Blogs' does think it will, perhaps he or she can explain? I can only assume this confusion is wilful, of the 'none so blind as those that will not see' school of delusion. The 'Blogs' person wonders why I so seldom respond to his or her intemperate, inaccurate, incoherent and ad hominem railings against me (many of them casting doubt on the quality of my religious faith).

Now he or she has licensed himself or herself to decide what my inmost thoughts are on any subject, even, perhaps especially, when I have never expressed them. Thus: 'As for the point on insulting the poorer, less talented children. Well, I have to admit you may not have said it outright, but I feel sure :) that you are of this opinion.' I am not sure what the colon and the bracket signify here. But the words make it plain that it is pointless to respond to 'Blogs', since he or she will decide what I think regardless of whatever I say or don't say.

Oh, and 'Frank M' (another hider behind a pseudonym) explains exactly why the London Oratory is not a normal comprehensive school, while absurdly maintaining that it is one. Thanks, Mr 'M'. He should be aware but a slow but relentless regulatory and legislative process is in being, making it harder and harder for such schools to behave in this way, and forcing them slowly into the comprehensive mould. Once that process has succeeded, he'll wish like anything it wasn't a comprehensive. And it may not presently be 'full of the New Labour elite' (I don't think I said it was. I said correctly that one of their number sent his children there) but even Mr 'M' must be aware of the fact that Anthony Blair sent his sons there, so as to avoid Bog Lane comp in Islington (and also to avoid going private). As for 'rich and influential', I would be interested to know the average incomes, and the occupations, trades or professions, of the parents at the Oratory, and the numbers of pupils there receiving the EMA. He shouldn't be so tiresome. He knows perfectly well what I mean, and that it's true.

At last, to Mr Hadley... first on the MMR: He says: 'Suppose this is the nearest Peter will ever get to making an admission that he was wrong in the correction to his earlier statement that measles had ceased to be a killer in this country when he was growing up.'

I concede unreservedly that I should have used the phrase 'major killer'. Measles can kill even today, as I am well aware. I trust he will accept (with reference to all my past statements on this subject) that this was a failure of precision on my part, rather than a deliberate attempt to conceal or avoid a fact. That is certainly the point of the argument, as he knows. I have never denied that children can die from measles. Readers here will know that I have maintained that they don't normally die from it in advanced rich countries.

Mr Hadley then says: 'From his own figures there were 2005 deaths from measles in England and Wales from 1951 to 1967. The declining trend had ended in 1954 with the death rate actually slightly increasing from then to 1967. In that period there was an average of 93 deaths per year.'

I am not sure I can discern an increase in the *rate* between 1954 and 1967. 1954 is a misleading starting point for a series. The 45 deaths in 1954 were well below average for the time (1953 had suffered 242; 1955, 174). What Mr Hadley completely, utterly, totally and determinedly ignores is the point about how these deaths were themselves enormously lower than those of 50 years before, and that the major fall in the 20th century took place long before there was any immunisation. It is very hard to allocate a single cause for the fall in deaths after 1967. I would happily credit immunisation for some of it, but the general improvement in health and nutrition, which had already made such a difference, cannot be left out by any reasonable person as a possible joint cause.

It is definitely absurd for Mr Hadley to argue as if the relatively small fall in measles deaths after 1967 is a greater or more significant triumph of human action than the fall from thousands to dozens which took place between 1914 and 1954. He just refuses to see this. Why? I think it is because it doesn't suit his case to do so. Once again, none so blind etc. I don't deny that immunisation helped reduce measles. Why should I? It's obviously true. It also doesn't damage my case, that measles in advanced countries is not a major killer. Why can't Mr Hadley acknowledge that advances in nutrition and general health achieved much more? Because **his** argument depends completely on an exaggeration of the dangers of measles. When his argument is not supported by the facts, he should change his argument. Instead, he ignores the facts or (see below) claims not to understand them. He also (see below) uses tactics of a kind I personally find contemptible.

Mr Hadley again: 'In previous posts he has argued correctly that the children who died were usually those with pre-existing vulnerability, as if to say that somehow this made their deaths less important.'

This is an astonishing use of the lowest smear tactics. We are not arguing about the importance of these deaths as such. At least I am not. I am arguing about what they mean in the argument about the MMR, and about the dangers of measles. The death of any child is a terrible thing, as all civilised people agree. Equally, it is a severe breach of the rules of debate, for Mr Hadley to suggest (as he has attempted before by implication and as he now explicitly does) that I am personally callous about the deaths of children. I call upon him either to substantiate his innuendo, or to withdraw and apologise in full. I wouldn't object to a handwritten private letter of apology as well as a public one, but the public one is essential if he wishes me ever again so much as to acknowledge any contribution he makes here.

Mr Hadley continues: 'He does not address the point I made about a measles epidemic still having a death rate of one in five hundred even in the developed world - as was shown in for example in an epidemic in America twenty years ago.'

How would he like me to address it? Does he regard the USA, now or 20 years ago, as a country entirely without poverty? The USA, as I have stated here, has a welfare state and many other features of a modern social democratic country. But its social inequalities remain quite different from those of Western European countries, partly due to ancient racial inequalities and partly due to the huge numbers of illegal migrants now living there. Is he aware of the considerable differences between the medical facilities available to the poor and the rich there? Do these statistics differentiate in any way between poor and rich? If he will offer me a general or specific point following from this fact, then I will know what it is I have to answer.

Mr Hadley correctly concedes: 'A proportion of measles cases lead to complications such as pneumonia and convulsions and about one child in 70 is admitted to hospital. Nowadays most children recover from these complications.' Somehow he seems to have omitted to state the size of the proportion he mentions. Perhaps he could oblige. I am sure it is helpful to his case.

He then asserts (and, boy, does he love to assert) that 'In 2006 a 13 year [old] boy from the North East died of measles. I have seen in the past Peter attempt to minimize this by pointing out that the boy had problems before he caught measles. He had been taking immunosuppressive drugs for a lung illness which reduced his ability to fight infections. I really cannot see the relevance of that point.'

Oh, can he not? Well, first, I don't think I've ever gone into much detail about this case (though there have been unsourced reports suggesting that Mr Hadley's facts are broadly right, except that it was the North West) because the authorities, when I asked them for those details, flatly refused to give them to me, claiming that this breached patient confidentiality - though it was the child's medical condition, not his identity, I sought. There are several unsubstantiated stories about this case, including one suggestion that the child came from a traveller community and almost certainly wouldn't have been vaccinated anyway, whatever Dr Wakefield had said, because immunisation rates in traveller communities are generally low, due to the nomadic nature of their existence meaning they have no regular contact with the NHS. But as to the relevance, I should have thought it quite clear. If the child was, as suggested, taking immuno-suppressants, he was presumably suffering from some quite serious ailment or he would not have needed to take them.

I also believe (and am open to correction here) that immunisations are not in any case given to children taking immuno-suppressant drugs. Our conclusions on this matter must depend on what that ailment was. What if his general health was such that he might have died even if he had not contracted measles? It was in pursuit of these facts that I contacted the relevant authorities. They refused to help me in any way (see above). I have subsequently had similar experiences when I have tried to check later claims of the same sort. Bold statements dissolve into vagueness and evasion. Why should this be, if this is the unadorned truth?

I made these checks, because of the checks I had made on the two children who famously died in a Dublin measles outbreak in 2000. The Irish authorities, more open than those here, eventually told me as follows (I quote here from my article of January 2001): 'One of the victims was a 12-month-old baby girl from a very poor family living in grim conditions on a large Dublin housing estate and was, incredibly for a European capital in the year 2000, malnourished. The other was also exceptional and seriously ill before he contracted measles. He was a two-year-old with a severe malformation of the throat which linked his windpipe with his oesophagus and who had to be fed by a tube let into his stomach.

'The Irish epidemic also revealed another unsettling fact for the "MMR at all costs" lobby. At least ten per cent of those who developed measles had been given the MMR jab. One in ten is a pretty high failure rate for a treatment that is being pressed on the public as a great social duty.'

Mr Hadley accuses: 'That boy died of measles because of the Andrew Wakefield bogus paper and the ill-informed nonsense that was written about it afterwards by people like Peter Hitchens. If those campaigning against MMR were to be more successful every year many other weak children would die of measles.'

I think this is false in almost all particulars. It is perfectly possible, so far as we know, that the child might have died even if Dr Wakefield had never spoken. The fact that we cannot be sure is attributable to the authorities, who unjustifiably refused to reveal important details. Why were they so unwilling to say? Could it be precisely because the details, if known, would have shown that this sort of accusation is unjustified?

This lack of facts is not attributable to people such as me, who diligently sought to obtain them. If his point is that Dr Wakefield's allegations allowed measles to spread, which may or may not be the reason for the child's death, I'd be equally entitled to say that Mr Blair's coyness about the immunisation of his child, and the authorities' stone-faced refusal to license single jabs on the NHS, could just as well be blamed for this outcome.

I'd also like Mr Hadley to come up with just one example of what he alleges was 'ill-informed nonsense' written by me. About what was I ill-informed? He should be precise. He should produce supporting quotations. I'd offer him a free run through my archives, but he apparently doesn't need it. He already knows enough to pronounce me guilty.

So he can presumably answer these questions from his own records. Or withdraw the accusation.

As for his pay-off line: 'Surely Peter is not going to say that their deaths would be unimportant because they were sick anyway.' This second attempt, by slantwise innuendo, to cast me as callous and unfeeling about the deaths of children is (see above) beneath contempt. By the way, I do wish this person, whom I have never knowingly met, would not repeatedly refer to me familiarly as 'Peter'. It sits ill with his general attitude towards me, and makes me feel faintly nauseous.

Now to education. Mr Hadley's position seems to me to have been reduced to nothing more than a series of assertions about might-have-beens which cannot be tested. Even so, they seem absurd to me and to most other contributors.

Here are some samples: 'On comprehensive schools Peter ignores the point I made that the comprehensive schools with the lowest levels of attainment -- the Bog Lane Comp -- have relatively very few families in their catchment areas who are passing on to their children any aptitude for academic success. Sixty years ago there would have been lots of families in the homes near the school headed by people like my parents. They were living in poor circumstances because they had had little or no chance of a decent education. After sixty years of greater opportunity almost all those who were most likely to pass on to their children the ability to profit from higher education will have moved away, and will have been replaced by people who may down on their luck, but are often unable to provide homes in which children can grow up with a love of learning.'

How does Mr Hadley know this interesting thing, which would seem to me to involve years of painstaking research of both past and present living conditions and educational patterns? What are his sources? It's not that I ignore it. It's that it's of no value in a serious argument. There is nothing to be said about it, any more than if he started giving us his theories about social systems and educational attainment in undiscovered galaxies.

He then adds: 'However even Bog Lane Comp gets around 20 per cent of its pupils through 5 A-C GCSEs.' Yes, and we've established that even Mr Hadley accepts that the GCSE is a devalued examination, and such results reveal nothing of any significance about what those 20 per cent actually know, let alone suggests that such results are equivalent to a grammar school education.

He adds: 'Knowing some schools like Bog Lane, and my parents, I have not the slightest doubt that both my parents would have been star pupils at such a school.'

How can we treat this expression of opinion as, in itself, any kind of support for his earlier opinion on the same subject? He might as well say 'This is true because I think it is' and be done with it.

And so what need have we of facts, of the exposure of Anthony Crosland's misunderstanding of the comprehensive idea in my recent book, or the research of Durham University and others on falling exam standards, so well described by Jenni Russell in The Guardian in her article 'Drilled, not educated', or of Dr John Marks on the general collapse in standards, or comparisons between modern exam papers and those of 30 years ago, or comparisons of Northern Ireland's selective system with England's comprehensives one in 'the Betrayed Generation' or indeed any facts at all? Mr Hadley (a bit like 'Blogs') just knows. And we must bow to his knowledge. Or not. In my case, not.

He then further asserts first this unsubstantiated and indeed untestable expression of opinion: 'They would have gone on to pass A-levels and do well at university.' (Which itself ignores the important question of what is nowadays meant by 'university', and whether *that* is the same thing it was 50 years ago, or even a comparable experience), followed by yet another, which I personally regard as wholly laughable: 'Schools like Bog Lane nowadays take great care of the minority of bright and willing pupils. Whatever anyone thinks of OFSTED, it has been effective over the last fifteen years in identifying and closing those schools that did not do this.'

Once again, there isn't a fact in sight. When did OFSTED ever set this, taking great care of the bright minority, as an objective? Surely that's exactly what comprehensive schools don't do, and aren't seriously expected to? The bright must hide from the bullies, share classrooms with yahoos, and hope to survive without too much damage. Special treatment for them would be 'elitism'. There is, by law, to be no selection on the grounds of academic ability. How many schools has OFSTED closed with this alleged aim in mind? When did it state this? No OFSTED document I have ever seen, and I have seen many, would even use such language.

I am tempted to describe this thin stuff as ill-informed nonsense. I hope to deal with other issues, the EU and the jury system, before long.

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23 June 2009 8:27 AM

A criminal trial is to go ahead at a Crown Court without a jury. Why worry? We are told that the case is exceptional, that the decision has been taken for fear of 'jury tampering'.

What do we know about this tampering? Nothing, actually. Evidence about it has been given only in secret. I am, I have to say, unsure why this should have had to be so. Was MI6 involved? And there was, in any case, an alternative. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, rejected the other possible course - holding the trial with a jury put under protective measures. This would have cost about £6million and involved 82 police officers which the Judge said was an 'unreasonable' drain on the public purse and police time. The issue will also not be allowed to go before the House of Lords, which seems odd to me given its importance.

While delivering his judgement, The Lord Chief Justice thundered that 'In this country trial by jury is a hallowed principle of the administration of criminal justice. It is properly identified as a right, available to be exercised by a defendant.' Then he added the less thunderous get-out clause 'unless and until the right is amended or circumscribed by express legislation'. That was the important bit.

He concluded, in explanation of his 'historic' decision to breach the principles of centuries of English liberty, that 'the danger of jury tampering and the subversion of the process of trial by jury is very significant'. In this case, three men are accused of carrying out a robbery at the Menzies World Cargo warehouse at Heathrow in 2004. According to The Guardian, 'the police had been watching an employee of the warehouse and suspected a robbery was going to take place. Only one man has ever been jailed for the robbery, a supergrass who pleaded guilty after giving police information. During the armed raid six masked men rounded up members of staff at gunpoint and shots were fired at a supervisor. The robbers were caught on CCTV.'

This extraordinary change in the English justice system is allowed by the Criminal Justice Act 2003, sections 44 and 46, which came into force in 2007. The sections are quite tightly drawn, and a judge has to be convinced that tampering has taken place or that there is a grave danger of it.

Why does this worry me? Quite a lot of criminal lawyers say they would prefer trials in front of judges, point out that miscarriages of justice frequently happen with jury trial, and so on. I accept all these points, though I also know of jury trials where it is plain that the jurors have acted with subtlety and discrimination, quite possibly preventing miscarriages of justice.

My concern is that, without juries, the power of the state is far too great. And that once you have accepted one excuse for abandoning jury trial, which is costly and makes lawyers work harder for their money, you have lost the battle for the principle and it will only be a matter of time before (probably under pressure from the EU, where independent juries are largely unknown outside the British Isles) the whole idea is quietly dispensed with. In a way, the Crown Prosecution Service already functions as a sort of continental Examining Magistrate system, and 'anti-terror' law is fast undermining the principle of Habeas Corpus, increasingly permitting the prejudicial and dangerous lengthy pre-trial detention that is a feature of continental criminal procedure. Increasingly, the authorities can ruin your life without ever having to prove anything against you, and put irresistible pressure on you to cooperate in your own prosecution.

Hard cases make bad law, and the issue of criminal trials is in many ways a red herring. The outcomes of most criminal trials probably wouldn't be significantly different if we had a non-jury system. It's the principle of innocence till proved guilty that's so important. Modern rules of evidence, the general feebleness of the police and courts and the CPS, seem to me to have far more impact upon the general power of the law against criminals than the occasional alleged case of jury tampering.

While researching my most reviled and abused book A Brief History of Crime, I spent a fascinating day at the enormous Liverpool Crown Court complex, where I found what I described as 'a near-breakdown of respect for justice', including widespread intimidation of juries and witnesses, about which nobody did anything at all. The whole experience is described in the chapter entitled Twelve Angry Persons. The fault lay not in the jury system, but in the general weakness of the police and the authorities, resulting from 40 years of cultural revolution and Fabian legislation.

In the same chapter I noted a general hostility in the English state towards jury trial, disturbingly expressed in Lord Justice Auld's 'Review of the Criminal Courts' in October 2001. I warned that the Blair government was using the growth of crime under its rule as a pretext to limit liberty.

But my main point was this, and I repeat it now in a shorter form. Jury trial is a happy accident, never willingly or knowingly handed out by authority in this country, but fortunately arising out of Magna Carta and sustained by a series of important court victories since then.

The most important guarantee of freedom in the world was never 'democracy', often a threat to freedom via the tyranny of the majority. It is the existence of independent juries, and the presumption of innocence which this requires.

In a non-jury country, a trial is an assembly of servants of the state, meeting to decide what to do with somebody they already believe to be guilty. In a jury country it is a trial with an uncertain outcome, in which the Judge is compelled to be impartial and the prosecution must prove its case.

The criminal law, in these circumstances, simply cannot be used to put away people the state does not like. The powers of the police against the law-abiding are severely limited. The relation between individual and state is transformed. Faced with having to give up elections or jury trial, I would have no hesitation in saving jury trial. It is a much greater restraint on the state.

I explain in my book that juries in this country were badly weakened in the 1960s. First they were damaged by an egalitarian campaign which abolished the old property qualification, and failed to replace it (as they should have done) with a higher age limit or an educational test. This means that an 18-year-old with no experience of life and a very limited education can now ruin your life in afternoon. The property qualification ensured that experienced and mature people, with a stake in society predominated on juries. It could easily have been reformed to allow women to sit on juries in equal numbers. I think this ill-thought-out and rash decision to open juries to all but criminals and the certifiably insane might explain some of the odder verdicts in recent years.

Second, they were wounded by the introduction of majority verdicts, again on the grounds (as now, never detailed or proven) that there was a menace of jury tampering. This is immensely damaging. As the film Twelve Angry Men shows, a single determined juror can by sheer persistence and courage prevent a miscarriage of justice - in either direction. The introduction of majority verdicts means that he or she can simply be over-ridden. I am still amazed that this momentous change was pushed through with so little opposition.

Now, once again on a rather shaky and unsubstantiated pretext, the absolute right to jury trial is being salami-sliced away. If jury tampering is so serious, when are we going to see exemplary prosecutions of those involved? Have there been any such prosecutions? I have heard of none.

It is interesting that the question of cost was raised, as a reason for not adopting the alternative of special protection. A principle such as universal jury trial seems to me to be worth quite a lot of money, certainly more than we spend (say) on second homes for MPs or the armies of facilitators and outreach workers employed by local authorities? Does this country really not have £6million available to defend one of its most ancient liberties? As for 82 police officers, all you need to do is postpone a few diversity training courses and hey presto! There will be hundreds of extra officers instantly available for guard duty.

But if we are prepared, in general, to abandon justice on the grounds of cost, then the argument that jury trial is in itself too expensive will become increasingly powerful in the years to come, as we turn into a poor country.

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21 June 2009 9:53 AM

Any day now you could wake up and find that you are subject to the rule of President-of-Europe Anthony Blair.

After the Irish and the Czechs have been clubbed into submission this autumn, the long-planned European Superstate will at last come into being. And Mr Blair is likely to be its Head of State. For those of a sensitive disposition, this means two horrible things happening at once.

It is bad enough that the ghastly Blair creature might rise from the political tomb, hands clasped in pious prayer, upper lip trembling with fake emotion, pockets crammed with money from the lecture circuit, drivel streaming from his mouth. That would perhaps be the only thing that might make the nation warm to Gordon Brown again.

But far worse is the awful truth, which so many have hidden from themselves, that Britain will from that moment cease to be an independent nation in any important way.

The EU will take on a ‘legal personality’ of its own, become a nation in its own right, one in which we are a subject province for the first time in more than a thousand years, less independent than Texas is of Washington DC.

And this is why I hate the people in politics and the media who call themselves ‘Eurosceptics’. What are they for? What good have they done? They stand about, mainly in the Unconservative Party, claiming to be concerned about the way the EU is swallowing this country.

But they refuse to take the one step that would actually make a difference. They will not call for this country to leave the EU. You will have to ask them why not. There is no reason Britain could not exist outside the EU, which sells more to us than it buys from us, drags us into trade disputes with the USA which are not in our interest, steals our fish, chokes our small business, mucks up our farms and milks us each year of incalculably large sums of money we could spend better ourselves.

There is every reason for us to go our own way, especially if we wish to preserve our unique laws and liberties against the fast-approaching ‘Stockholm Programme’ which aims to impose continental law on this country, together with a menacing set of surveillance powers quite beyond the control of our Parliament.

So the next time a ‘Eurosceptic’ presents himself to you for election, ask him why he won’t go the extra yard (not metre), and if he won’t do so, find a man who can. The time for scepticism is long past. What is there left to have doubts about? The thing is as bad as we feared. The time for secession has arrived.

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Tearing down another safety net

Why would the Government be so keen to repeal a law which protects free speech? You decide. Here are the details. Last year, in a law called The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, New Labour created a new criminal offence, called ‘incitement to hatred on grounds of sexual orientation’.

I will not argue here about whether such a law is necessary or right. My point is different. What is important is that several Peers were concerned that such a law might one day be misused to prosecute the expression of opinion.

They rightly did not trust assurances that such a law could never be used for such purposes. They had noticed the increasing tendency of the police to menace individuals for voicing unfashionable opinions about homosexuality.

So they fought to insert a clause saying ‘for the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred’.

Government spokesmen claimed this was not necessary.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re wrong. Who can tell the future? That’s the whole point, and wise law-makers know that laws are often used in ways never intended by those who drafted and passed them. But what harm can such a safeguard possibly do? None, obviously.

Yet, probably this Tuesday, the liberal State will mobilise its forces in the House of Lords to rip away this sensible safety net. If it succeeds, I predict that the result will be the persecution of Christians and others who wish to resist the sexual revolution.

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Let Britain's branch lines run again

Are we at last beginning to grasp that the massacre of the railways by Dr Richard Beeching was a grave mistake?

Train companies are talking of reopening dozens of abandoned lines and stations, and about time too. Why not reopen the lot? Scores of medium-sized towns - absurdly - have no railway link.

The countryside is closed to those without cars. Millions of tons of freight clog the roads, which in the USA would certainly travel by rail. Road-building has failed.

As the M25 shows, the more you build, the more jammed they get. Railways were invented in this country because they suited our landscape. They still do. Whether you believe the global-warming panic merchants and the predictions that oil will run out, or whether you do not, there has never been a better time to bring back trains.

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Who will join the judge and speak against divorce?

The single biggest disaster of the Sixties was the introduction of easy divorce - a liberation for adults, paid for by the misery of millions of children ever since.

I am glad to hear Mr Justice Coleridge, who sees the results in family courts, condemning the ‘endless game of “musical relationships” - or “pass the partner” - in which such a significant portion of the population is engaged, in the endless and futile quest for a perfect relationship which will be attained, it is supposed, by landing on the right chair or unwrapping a new and more exciting parcel’.

But when will any politician have the nerve to admit that the Divorce Reform Act of 1969 was a grave error, and that marriage needs to be strengthened again?

The subject is almost undebatable. As Judge Coleridge has pointed out, the BBC plan to screen a powerful documentary series on family breakdown in the middle of the night so that hardly anyone will see it, preferring to keep prime time for violence, swearing and moral slurry.

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Final notes...

The weird religion of football softens the brain. The Iranian protests against the ayatollahs are without doubt the most significant events in the world today. Crucial, you might say. Yet when a group of Iranian footballers chose to don green armbands to show their support for the protesters, the BBC reported, in radio news bulletins, that they did this before a ‘crucial’ soccer match. That’s right. The game was ‘crucial’. The struggle for the future of a great country was unworthy of any adjective.

Who needs an inquiry into the Iraq War? It’s over. Nobody will be brought to justice. Isn’t it time Parliament debated our dubious involvement in Afghanistan, and sought to end it?

I am pleased to report that the powerful, gruelling film Katyn, about the Communist murder of the Polish officer corps, has at last been released in British cinemas. If it is showing near you, I recommend you make the effort to see it.

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Mr Hadley is back, hinting that my protected middle class upbringing somehow made me unconcerned about the deaths of poor children from Measles in the 1950s and 1960s. Hmm. Well, he brought it up. let's see if it works to the advantage of his case.

The measles vaccine was first introduced in this country in 1968. Figures for deaths from measles in England and Wales show 221 deaths in 1950, 317 in 1951(the year of my birth) , 141 in 1952, 242 in 1953, 45 in 954, 174 in 1955, 28 in 1956, 94 in 1957, 49 in 1958, 98 in 1959, 31 in 1960, 152 in 1961, 39 in 1962, 127 in 1963, 73 in 1964, 115 in 1965, 80 in 1966, 99 in 1967, 51 in 1968, 36 in 1969, 42 in 1970, 28 in 1971, 29 in 1972, 33 in 1973, 20 in 1974, 16 in 1975. You will see that they vary considerably, but the general trend is downwards throughout this period, before and after immunisation was introduced. The figures for the following years then vary between 14 and 26, falling into single figures after MMR reduction in 1988.

This certainly shows that immunisation reduces the incidence of and deaths from Measles. I don't doubt it and don't dispute it. But is it the most important determinant? Measles deaths in the early years of the 20th century in England Wales were around 9,000 a year, hugely greater than during my childhood, at one stage rising to 16,000 before beginning a noticeable downward trend through the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s up to the present day.

Remember, there was no immunisation of any kind for most of this period. So the reduction in mortality ( far greater than any achieved either by single injections or the MMR) simply must be the result of something else. There is no other conclusion that an honest person can draw. What this tends to show is that what we should have been concerned about in my childhood was not measles as such, but measles combined with malnutrition and general poor health. I am sure that if we had a map of measles deaths in England and Wales during my childhood, they would be concentrated in areas of grave poverty. Actually we were concerned about that, hence the great improvements in public health and child nutrition which took place during those years.

I say that measles ceased to be a killer **in this country** long ago. I quite clearly and unmistakably differentiate advanced countries from poor countries, saying in my original reply to him the following words, exactly reproduced "By contrast, measles is still a major threat in many poor countries where general standards of health and nutrition are poor, underlining that it is these conditions which are the variable, not the presence or absence of immunisation."

It is, therefore, er, disingenuous for Mr Hadley to say :"On MMR Peter says that Measles ceased to be a killer long ago. He presumably does not know that 197,000 children died world wide from measles in 2007, but of course nearly all of those children were malnourished. "

In fact it is evidence that ( as I often suspect) he does not read what I write with any care. Not merely do I know this fact. I specifically acknowledge it, take it into account and indeed use the information to illustrate my essential point. And I specifically warn, in a later posting, against the way in which "This fearsome reputation as a deadly killer has been bestowed on it during the MMR propaganda wars, by the use of misleading statistics lumping the third world with the first, ". Mr Hadley promptly obliges by lumping them together. Pay attention, Mr Hadley! In my day, you'd have had the board rubber thrown at you for such sloppiness.

Talking of which, can he please justify his amazing string of assertions about comprehensive schools with some actual facts. he says: "My parents were both very intelligent people, but when they were of school age in the 1920s and 1930s coming from modest homes they, like all their ancestors, had little or no chance to obtain a decent education. They each had left school by the time they were 15 and went into employment with poor prospects. However they passed on to me a love of books and an aptitude to succeed at school."

Fair enough. Good for them.

He then says: "If they had had the chances provided today of a comprehensive education I have no doubt that they would have both gone to university and joined the 'professional classes'. "

Why does he have no doubt? This is an amazing claim. What sort of comprehensive education does he mean? Does he think they would have gone to Camden Girls, or the London Oratory, or William Ellis, like the children of the New Labour Elite? How would they have done that, if their own parents had not been rich or influential? They would have been much more likely to suffer from the sort of comprehensive education they would get in Bog Lane Comp, with its indiscipline, endlessly changing supply teachers, bullying of bright children etc? We've **been** through all this. Doesn't Mr Hadley take any notice of what anyone else says, or of any of the replies I have provided in the past to his curious assertions? . I do begin to doubt it. (see above).

Then he says: "They did not, but their children and grandchildren did." Well, this is curious. Did their children (and Mr Hadley) somehow sleep, like Rip van Winkle, through the selective era? Surely their children would have benefited from the grammar schools and their free places, offered by the 1944 Education Act and continuing in existence until about 1970?

And if their children had benefited from that, then their grandchildren might have been able to climb into the middle class, and therefore been able to go to the better comprehensives in prosperous rural areas or pleasant suburbs, where something approaching a good education (not very good, in my view, but that's another debate) is still available. Perhaps this is what happened, but it does not suit Mr Hadley's case to mention it. Otherwise they would be just as doomed, if not more so, than their grandparents.

We have also dwelt many times upon the distortion of the intake of the tiny few remaining grammar schools because of the very heavy demand on their small number of places, forbidden by law from being increased, so that it tells us two parts of nothing whatever about the likely results of reintroducing a national selective system open to all, in all areas.

Any intelligent person must realise this, so why use this wretched fake argument? And Mr Hadley **never, never never** answers my query to him, as to why he confuses exam certificates, which can be and are devalued by the state, with actual achievement. Does he really think a GCSE is equivalent to an O level, or even the same currency? If so, I wish he would say so, and then anyone who knows anything at all about education could discount everything he said on the subject .

The person calling himself 'Joe Blogs' knows nothing of the subject. he says grammar schools were "simply for those who could afford to pay". No, Mr "Blogs", they were free. That is the whole point. Good schools, provided free, to anyone who could pass a test - amazing, eh? And Mr "Blogs" continues "It is insulting when you, and others of the same mindset, suggest that poorer students are less 'TALENTED' simply because they are poor and their parents cannot afford to pay for private tuition." Well, it might be insulting if I had said it. But I defy Mr "Blogs" to produce any quotation justifying this claim.

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19 June 2009 10:49 AM

I wonder how many people recalled, or even knew in the first place, that Thursday was the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Come to that, how many people under 50 care, or know what or when that battle was? Yet I'm sure it was general knowledge, and generally understood, until surprisingly recently. Has it been forgotten because it has slipped further into the past, or because nobody is now expected to know things of this kind? Or because the knowledge itself, and its implications for debates about national independence and the British relationship with continental Europe, are increasingly subversive?

When I was growing up, the place was crammed with people who had served in World War Two and there were plenty who recalled World War One as well. Now 1939-45 veterans are fast disappearing, and 1914-18 ones are almost extinct in every nation involved. I even remember ITN ( as it then was) doing a historic news bulletin on 4th August 1964, to mark the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War. I seem to remember newscasters equipped with rather obviously fake Kitchener moustaches, and an ancient telephone on the desk, as they recorded the expiration of The Ultimatum and the final despatch from Berlin before the lines were cut. It is chastening to think that in five years time, that evening will be as long ago as the Battle of Mons was in 1964.

In the case of Waterloo, it was dead man's history even then, the last stragglers of that battle having perished (there's a moving Conan Doyle short story called 'A Straggler of 15') long before. Yet we all knew many stories of that battle, and what it had meant, and had pictures of it in our minds. It's just not the sort of history we study now, just as knowing where places are and what their capital cities are called is not the sort of geography we do, as one contributor noted. Instead it's the diseases suffered by the soldiers, the floggings they endured, and of course the differing climates of the time that we have to be interested in these days. I've more than once remarked on the extraordinary change in the tours of HMS Victory at Portsmouth, which used to concentrate on Nelson's death, his last words ('Thank God I have done my duty'), the terrible death grapple with the French man o' war 'Redoutable', and the great victory of Trafalgar, and are now all about how many weevils there were in each biscuit, and how cruel and insanitary naval life was in those unenlightened days.

Which brings me alongside Mr Hadley's responses to my most recent posting. But before I board his vessel with cutlass aloft, a few reactions are necessary to comments on my Sunday column. Mr Brant asserts that murder has not substantially increased since the abolition of the death penalty. Several points here: Can he please cite his sources? Is he referring to homicide as a whole? If he is using 'murder' as his definition, is he aware that the definition of 'murder' alters according to the legal punishment of that crime? For instance, when we still had a death penalty, but after it was weakened by the Homicide Act of 1957 many killers attempted to avoid the noose by pleading 'diminished responsibility' and so being sentenced for manslaughter. After this weakening, convictions for murder rose slightly, but not spectacularly (from 32 in 1956 to 51 in 1961) . But convictions for 'manslaughter due to diminished responsibility', most of which would probably have been prosecuted and sentenced as murder before 1957, climbed from 11 to 41 between 1957 and 1964. Add them to the murder figures, and you get quite a significant jump.

Once the death penalty ceased to operate at all, this process continued. The distinction moved elsewhere. Rather than trying to avoid being hanged, the accused's lawyers sought to avoid a 'life' sentence. And the prosecution, mindful of prison overcrowding and the high cost of jury trials,has joined in (the affronted relatives of victims sometimes write to me about the resulting injustice). What has tended to happen in subsequent years is that many more cases which would once have been charged and prosecuted as murder were reduced (for speed and cheapness) to charges of manslaughter. So, many cases whose actual nature would have had them classified as murder in, say, 1955, will have been recorded as manslaughter in post 1965 Britain. It is very difficult, given the fluid boundary between the two, to establish numbers.

Then, as the 1948 Royal Commission on the subject rightly pointed out, one must always be careful with direct before and after comparisons. Generally, countries which abolish the death penalty have suspended it or restricted it for a long period before the moment of abolition. (Most of the American states which claim to have the death penalty for political purposes never actually execute anyone, which also tends to confuse the matter, and those which do only execute after immense delays, by which time the murderer has often forgotten what he did, and so that many sentenced murderers actually die of natural causes on Death Row, making 'comparisons' between 'death penalty' and 'non-death-penalty' states virtually meaningless).

In Britain's case, the 1957 Homicide Act, which prevented the execution of gang members who had participated in a homicidal crime, and enshrined the 'diminished responsibility' defence, effectively eviscerated the death penalty although it wasn't formally abolished for another seven years. Britain never executed many murderers in modern times (the highest tally in the post-war period was 18 in 1951) but by the time abolition came, the annual total of hangings rarely rose above two. A serious comparison of pre and post abolition should therefore track the whole period between 1945 and now, and examine in detail many of the homicides nowadays classified as 'manslaughter'.

It should also, as I have rather often pointed out, recognise that trauma surgery has hugely improved since 1964, and that many homicidal assaults, which would undoubtedly have resulted in death 45 years ago, now do not do so. This is not because of the criminals being gentler, or lacking the intent (or callous heedlessness of the consequences of their savagery) which lead to death. A clue as to how many such 'hidden murders' now take place is offered by the growth in attempted murder cases, which rose between 1976 and 1996 from 155 to 634. In the same period instances of 'wounding to endanger life' rose from 5,885 to 10,445. All these figures, and a careful examination of this superficially persuasive but in fact worthless part of the abolitionist case, are to be found in the chapter 'Cruel and Unusual' of my reviled book 'A Brief History of Crime'. Any decent library will find it for you. The issue is also addressed in another chapter 'Out of the Barrel of a Gun', which shows that two post-war suspensions of the death penalty (one in 1948 and the other in 1955-57) caused by Parliamentary debates on abolition, correlate with two substantial but temporary increases in the incidence of armed and violent crime (the form of crime which death penalty supporters argue is deterred by capital punishment). In both cases the figures fell again after the suspension ended, only to increase, and carry on increasing evermore, after final abolition.

A person humorously calling himself 'Bronstein' (Hi there, Lev Davidovich!) claims that there is something 'Stalinist' in having a compulsory daily act of Christian worship in our state schools. This misses with both barrels, and then once again. One, Stalin hated Christianity and persecuted it. Two, parents are free, by law, to withdraw their children from it. Three , this must be the most ignored law in the country apart from the one which says you shouldn't use your mobile phone while driving. Believe me, when Stalin enacted a law, he jolly well enforced it, no exceptions.

Tim Lemon, from his outpost the Moons of Jupiter, from which he is apparently unable to descry any of the replies that I ever past to his remarks, opines that the presence of British troops in a small corner of Afghanistan keeps that entire country from being used as a base by something called 'Al Qaeda'. Well, Mr Lemon, using your own techniques, 'What IS "Al Quaeda". Where are we to find its headquarters, its founding documents, its qualifications for membership and its aims set out? How do you know it exists?' 'What is your evidence for its existence'? And why does it need to operate from Afghanistan, when Islamist terror gangs seem quite capable of operating in Leeds and London?

Somebody else says that Opium Poppies being grown in Britain are different from those being grown in Afghanistan, because one lot is for legal purposes, and one not. Well, given that (so far as I know) there is a global shortage of medicinal opiates, wouldn't it be a grand idea if we offered the Afghan poppy farmers lucrative contracts to grow opium poppies legally, for medical purposes, like the ones which English farmers get for doing the same? Can anyone tell me why this would be a bad idea? Better, surely than suggesting they grow mint, or oats, or potatoes, or whatever the latest barmy substitute crop is? Or setting fire to their crops and propelling them into the arms of our enemies thereby?

On the MMR, two points. I am attacked elsewhere for saying I don't know if the MMR is safe or not, and told to go and find out. But that is the point. I cannot find out. Exaggerated claims are made for research which could not possibly show that the injection is totally safe. Science cannot prove such things. Such absolute knowledge isn't available. The pro-MMR campaigners won't normally admit this, with the notable and creditable exception of Ms Parry. The truth is, in such cases parents have a right to choose. Funny that an establishment, which claims the killing of unborn babies is and must remain a question of choice, now wants to ban choice in the case of a vaccination - and claims to be concerned for the lives of children as it does so. I am told that the plan to blackmail parents into having the MMR is 'only' a proposal. Well, of course it is. All such things start as proposals, and rapidly become facts if not vigorously opposed. Am I supposed to wait until it is a fact before I criticise it? As for those who claim that vaccination is the answer to measles, mumps and rubella, maybe they are right. If so, why do they resist the availability on the NHS of the single vaccines which would greatly increase take-up? That is what they say they want. So why not act accordingly? Apart from expressing a desire to make people do as they are told, they can never come up with an answer to this question.

On the subsidy for railways, the collection of tax on cars and fuel is irrelevant. These are merely points at which it is cheap, politically easy and simple to collect tax which the state dare not raise by direct taxation on incomes. Railway users also pay these taxes, directly or indirectly, if they use motor vehicles or buy goods which have been transported by road. There has not for many decades been any suggestion that there exists a 'road fund' into which car taxes are paid. The simple fact is that without huge state subsidies and organisation, we would not have a road system in this country, let alone the vast concrete octopus which currently strangles it with inefficient, dangerous, slow-moving motor traffic and blankets it with clouds of toxic emissions and incessant noise. Likewise, the tax exemption on aviation fuel hugely encourages air travel, and helps make possible the absurdly low air fares which threaten to put middle-distance rail services out of business.

Now to Mr Hadley, whom I thank for the length of his replies. I am also grateful to him for completely conceding my point that the comprehensive schools are infected with loutish misbehaviour, and serve neither their less-blessed or their more talented pupils well. I wonder what it is he thinks I need 'first-hand' experience to know that I don't know about these places.

He then alas reveals himself to be a credulous consumer of what have rightly been called elsewhere on this blog 'Stalinist tractor production statistics'. He says, without a hint of irony: 'However, despite all this, if it is a typical school around half of the pupils will achieve five or more good GCSE passes and most of those will go on to A-levels and university. I know that it is far easier to pass A-levels than it was in the past, but despite this the reality is that there has been a real rise in attainment at all parts of the ability range.'

This is absurd. What is a 'good GCSE pass'. In what way is it 'good'? Much like these atrocious services on the London underground which travellers on that system are incessantly informed by loudspeaker announcements are 'good' . That is to say, they meet the very low standards devised by those who run them.

If the exams are easier to pass, as he now interestingly concedes (which is wise since it's beyond doubt) how can the fact that more people pass more of them mean that there has been a real rise in attainment? It can't.

He goes on to deny the 'myth' that 'children from poor backgrounds do not have the chance to succeed in comprehensives that the grammar schools used to provide'. But he appears to offers as 'disproof' of this the fact that more children, with more devalued exam certificates, go to more 'universities' with immeasurably lower standards than their predecessors.

The sad thing is that many of these children would once have been genuinely educated to high standards, whereas all they have now are certificates proving nothing of any importance, based upon laughable examinations.

He claims: 'The school would certainly be able to introduce you to many pupils from very disadvantaged backgrounds who have been able to do just that.' Would it? I very much doubt it. Where is his evidence of this? The children from the poorest backgrounds now invariably attend the worst schools, where they do not even get the certificates and the places at dud universities available to their (not much) more fortunate coevals.

Interestingly, he claims that: 'There are, of course, now rather fewer very bright children from poor backgrounds than there were in the 1950s.' Really? How does he know? He also asserts: 'From most of his comments on schools it appears that Peter believes that the root cause of their problems is that a quarter of pupils do not go to grammar schools.'

I believe no such thing, and have never said anything of the kind. I certainly believe that the abolition of the grammar schools was a catastrophe, and one which could easily and swiftly be reversed. But I do not think it was the root cause of the problem. The root of it is the dogma which places egalitarianism before education, and the allied dogma which opposes rigour and discipline in general as tools of repression. I have always said that the tripartite system failed to provide the technical schools which were and are so badly needed (though I have defended the Secondary Moderns as having been in many cases better than they are portrayed , probably better than and certainly no worse than the comprehensives that replaced them). My main point is that the state education of the less talented was in no way improved by destroying good state education for the more talented. There was plenty wrong with pre-comprehensive British schools. But none of it was put right by the destroying the one part of it which demonstrably worked well. Why cannot my opponents ever argue with me without misrepresenting my position?

Mr Hadley also says: 'I did not say that the law requires compulsory school education - but that it requires compulsory education.' This is not quite right. Mr Hadley wrote as if compulsory education and compulsory school education were synonymous. They aren't, and it is in that loophole that home education has survived in this country. I have long suspected that the new elite would eventually discover this, and my fears have been borne out in the last few years. It is nice of him to quote the wording of the Education Act to me, but didn't he notice that I had already provided the crucial quotation -the words 'or otherwise' - myself? This rather suggests that I already knew the passage which he kindly reproduces.

He asserts: 'The Badman report is an attempt to show how the existing law should be implemented to protect the rights of children'. No it is not. It is an attempt to extend the rights of the state by spurious invocations of non-existent 'abuse'. There is no evidence that the 'rights' of children are being violated by home-schooling parents, and no evidence that the state has any qualification to discover whether this is so, let alone any capacity to remedy it, if discovered. The growth in home education has been caused mainly by the state's dogma-ridden incompetence in this precise field. How can it therefore judge the qualifications of others to do something it cannot do well itself? It merely wishes to preserve an oppressive monopoly. Why does Mr Hadley desire so much to be the defender and apologist of the authorities? They will not thank him. They have no need of him, preferring as they do the brute force of law to persuasion by argument.

I have said all that I wish to say about the MMR. It is this: 'Single vaccines on the NHS ( as an alternative to, not a replacement for, the MMR) , now.' I have yet to come up against a good argument against this policy. Those who wish to muddy the waters by making claims of cupidity against participants are asked to pursue these tiresome and contentious allegations elsewhere. Dr Wakefield seems to me to have suffered, not profited, through his stand. Though I believe the state seeks to aggrandise itself, as bindweed seeks to choke the ground it grows on, I don't attribute motives of personal greed or other wickedness to those who oppose me in this debate (except to the anonymous persons who faked a lying letter to me). I ask that, here at least, we steer clear of such things.

But I must insist that measles in my childhood was not regarded as a major or dangerous complaint. 'Rob C' asks: 'Given that measles was a well-established killer of children, the most serious of common childhood infections, and that there is no advantage to catching it earlier in life, I find it very unlikely that millions of parents were so criminally perverse as to deliberately infect their own children.'

It wasn't 'a well-established killer'. This is part of my point, and 'Rob C' should understand what this means - that current state propaganda portrays measles as a major threat, in a way which people of my generation find quite disturbing. We know different. My parents' generation, like me, would have been amazed at the fuss being made over it nowadays. It had ceased to be a killer long ago. It was spoken of quite lightly in my childhood, and I was subsequently amazed to find it had ever been thought of as serious, let alone that it might be fatal. Once you'd had it, you'd had it, which is why I expect parents wanted their children to get it, just like the other minor childhood ailments we all got. This fearsome reputation as a deadly killer has been bestowed on it during the MMR propaganda wars, by the use of misleading statistics lumping the third world with the first, and by portraying ( as I KEEP saying) exceptional measles deaths affecting previously sick children as the deaths of normal healthy children. The surprise expressed by 'Rob C' shows how successful this propaganda has been. But, as I have often said, the exaggeration of the measles threat by the pro-MMR faction is one of the reasons why I have remained sceptical about their case as a whole.

Mr Hadley also says: 'The independent psephologists, taking into account all the figures Peter quoted, said that the results would lead to a comfortable win at a general election for the Conservatives. So readers have to decide whether to trust expert unbiased statistical analysis, or someone with an axe to grind picking at the figures in order to make a point. I guess that most readers of this blog will go along with Peter.'

Did they? Can he name a wholly independent person who said this? Independent of what? If he read my 'Broken Compass' he would know why the fashionable left now so love the Tories, and how they express their love. As I repeatedly say, almost all the media are committed to a Tory victory. Their analyses of the polls are no more independent than mine, and they are unlikely to hire analysts who will defy the party line. My advantage is that the figures, as shown, support my case. The Tories are not doing well. John Curtice of Strathclyde University seems to me to be highly sceptical of claims that current results put the Tories on course for victory. Peter Kellner of YouGov always used to say (until I began going on about it ) that no opposition had ever won an election without getting more than 50% in an opinion poll, which Mr Cameron's Tories have not done, except in one isolated and unrepeated survey. And I doubt very much if Mr Cameron believes anything of the kind. Though I am sure he hopes the mug punters do, because in our wonderful democracy, if people think a party is going to win, they are more likely to vote for it - for that reason. Beats me too.

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16 June 2009 7:54 AM

Some correspondents resolutely refuse to get my point about David Cameron's housing arrangements (and now George Osborne's too).

I am well aware that the claims made by these very rich men were within the rules of the Additional Costs Allowance. Most of the more outrageous claims exposed in the recent revelations were within the rules. That was the problem. The rules were wrong.

But surely intelligent people do not need rules to point out to them that it is plain wrong for a rich person to use taxpayers' money, squeezed from modestly-paid breadwinners, who have to pay all their own expenses unaided, under the threat of imprisonment, to help them buy luxurious country homes?

If Mr Cameron wants a big house in the hills of Oxfordshire as well as his spacious London home ( and who can blame him?) then let him pay for it himself. I am sorry if this seems such a revolutionary idea.

I do not particularly want a 'means test' on MPs, though I also don't particularly see why such a test would be undesirable or unjust. I see absolutely nothing wrong in a contest among MPs to see which of them can make the cheapest housing claim ( what does my critic think is wrong with such an idea?).

I just want rich people to recognise that it is plain wrong for them to milk the taxpayer to help buy their houses for them. And I want the disgust with the greed of MPs to be a cross-party matter, just as the greed is a cross party matter.

I suspect my critics are people who still want the Unconservative Party to win the next election, and wish to conceal from themselves the blindingly obvious truth, that an Unconservative Government would be no better than what we have, and quite possibly worse. As usual, none so blind as those that will not see.